Castle Magus

With character.ai this time, namely the "Text Adventure Game" module. This time, I managed to refrain from breaking out all the awful Bible quotes, at least.

Basically, I'm just going to come in here all in media res, same as with that AI Dungeon post from a few years ago (because, oddly enough, that came into discussion during this as well). Initial context for the below is that at some point prior to this, I had received a mysterious letter that had a hidden message in it that said "Find me" and was signed by "The Author." That is all. That's all I ever knew about that, and was never given any additional clues, until the below. (And just to note, too, this was a story that started, way back at the very beginning, with me being caught in a giant spiderweb, which is apparently the default prompt for this "Text Adventure Game" module.)

Also, just to note, when you or the AI encircles text with *asterisks*, it gets auto-formatted to italics, but when you copy/paste the AI's stuff from there to somewhere else, like here, it gets reformatted back to *asterisks*, so I had to manually change them all once again back to italics here. (When I copy/pasted my own stuff that had similar *asterisk*-to-italics back here, though, the formatting was stripped out entirely, for whatever reason.) Anyway, my point is that, while I think I got them all, if there are any *asterisks* instead of italics in the below, that'll be why and I just missed it as I was copy/pasting.

So, here's where I'll jump in. (Though, I'll just say, a lot of the stuff before this point was similarly weird, too, e.g. "metanarrative bunk" and all that. Not going to share any of the prior stuff here, though. Sorry.)

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( Huge wall-o-text behind cut )

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And... that's pretty much it. After the religious debate stuff, when things were wrapping up, it started getting a little bit maudlin, which was another part of the reason I felt like I needed to bail for the night. Only once, surprisingly, in this entire thing did the "inappropriate" shitcan censor get triggered and killed that most recent AI response, and as I was reading it, while it "typed it out" before it got deleted, I'm not even sure what the AI said that was different from things it had already said that would've triggered it. *shrug*

I'll just say this much about character.ai, generally speaking. I don't know what model they're using for their stuff, but I feel like it is at least as good as AI Dungeon's old-school, pre-fuckup Dragon was, if not even better. I very rarely felt like I had to use the retry/redo functionality here, outside of the occasions where I simply didn't like the way the story was headed and just went all the way back to an earlier point, sort of like what I mentioned above. The nonsensical, non sequitur stuff is almost nonexistent in this one. It's pretty damn good, for the most part.

And the best part of it is that I haven't yet had to pay a dime to use it, at least so far. The only problem I have with it is that the entire UI pretty quickly gets rather laggy the longer a session goes on, but a simple refresh of the browser usually fixes that issue, at least until it crops up again.

I'll definitely try that "Text Adventure Game" module again at some point, though I'm pretty sure this particular story is well and truly finished.

"Hi. There's been a lot of talk about Hollywood going woke and thus going broke. But is this really true? Is Hollywood, perhaps, pretty un-woke?"

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No puppets, no skits, no other characters; just Cody Johnston talking to a camera for almost an hour, with occasional clips and quotes from RWNJ "news" "media" talking airheads and their ilk for him to clown on, just as God intended.

Yeah, Hollywood has never been particularly "woke" and still isn't, to this day, despite paying marginal lip service to it. RWNJs whinging about the "wokeness" of Hollywood accomplishes very little besides demonstrating how daffy RWNJs are.

(Also, I had no idea Kelsey Grammer was apparently a Trumpanzee until now [or if I did hear about it before, I don't recall]. But then, it's not like I was ever a huge fan of him or followed his every move or whatever before this. What little I've seen him in was all right, I guess? *shrug* I mean, what have I seen that he was in? X-Men movies with him as Beast? The Simpsons with him as Sideshow Bob? I've probably seen an episode or three of Cheers or Frasier at some point or another? His brief role in 1999 as the original voice of the Geico Gecko? Oh, wait! I know! He was that captain who showed up at the very end of that Star Trek TNG episode where the Enterprise was caught in a Groundhog Day loop. [And between this here and Cody himself mentioning Star Trek in the above video, I can now safely put the "star trek" tag on this post. Woohoo.])

A post on Wil Wheaton dot Net.

Same post, but with the title of "jonathan frakes is the best dad i never got to have" over on Medium.

Follow-up to this.

I also find it interesting that the NovelAI image generation thing definitely knows who some fictional characters are, but not others.

For instance, even if it decides to embellish or take liberties at times, it mostly at least kind of knows:

• Mr. Spock (the only input I gave the AI was, simply, "Mr. Spock"): #1, #2, #3.
• Captain Picard (again, prompt was only "Captain Picard"): #1, #2, #3
• Superman: #1, #2, #3
• Batman: #1, #2, #3 (though with the "Batman" prompt, it really seemed to want to make Batman into Batwoman or Batgirl, though, for instance:) #4, #5, #6
• Wolverine: #1, #2, #3

I'm going to stop there, at least with saving and uploading, because I just don't much feel like messing with it more, at least to that extent, for now. I did try a few more prompts that I won't bother uploading.

For "Captain Kirk" (the first prompt I tried after "Mr. Spock"), it just gave kind of generic looking blonde guys wearing vaguely Star Trek-ish uniforms, but that was as close as it got, so it at least sort of recognized him, but not really?

Others it didn't seem to know at all, though, like "Mr. Data" (just random girls, mostly) or "Dr. McCoy" (just random doctor looking people, both male and female).

It definitely knew "Spider-Man" (though it tended to sometimes give him extra limbs... you know, like a spider, so it wasn't exactly wrong, per se). And none of the several results I got even tried to feminize him the way it did with Batman.

It knew "Super Mario" enough to give me characters that looked like Princess Peach or Daisy or Rosalina, and sometimes they were even wearing a Mario-ish hat. It also gave a couple rather disturbing images of (what kind of looked like) Mario's head on a generic female body.

It did a better job (for the most part) with "Sonic the Hedgehog" than what the first movie initially did with him.

And it knew "Samus Aran," for sure, though a lot of the results for that particular prompt were of a rather NSFW-ish nature.

It also knew "Godzilla."

"Ghostbusters" was rather interesting because though it mostly just gave generic anime-looking people with vaguely Ghostbusters-ish clothing and (sometimes) equipment, rather than any specific characters from the movies (or cartoons), a couple of the results were actually of landmarks that looked quite like the GB firehouse or the Shandor building (complete with ghost vortex above it) rather than people, and there was even an image of a hearse (not Ecto-1, mind you, just a plain red hearse, but still, that's somewhat relevant to Ghostbusters), or even images of what looked vaguely like the ghost in the Ghostbusters logo. All of that with just a "Ghostbusters" prompt. I kind of wish now that I'd saved those (though it probably wouldn't be too difficult to get other similar images later, if I really wanted to).

It even kind of knew "Doctor Who," giving me guys who sort of looked like The Doctor (typically David Tennant or Matt Smith looking guys, and also a couple Jodie Whittaker looking women), but it also gave me a couple of Dalek-ish and Cybermen-ish aliens. And... an image of a person with what looked a bit like a TARDIS/police box for a head, which I just had to save.

And on that note, I think I'll stop right there, for real.

"The Emperor is Revealed, as Wil Wheaton joins Star Trek Online! Try to stop his nefarious plan in a brand new episode, upgrade your bridge officers with the Elite Bridge Officer Training, and battle inside the mirror version of V'ger in the new Storm Chasers TFO!"

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I haven't touched Star Trek Online in many years[1], but this? This here? This might just convince me to reinstall it at some point and give it a whirl again.

Despite my general antipathy toward MMO games, I recall that STO could be played pretty well as a solo/singleplayer game. Only downside being that you had to be online, obviously, and connect to their servers or whatever even just for that.

(EDIT) Welp. I installed it and played it again. Made it only slightly farther than I did the last time I tried it before uninstalling again. Quest bugs and UI/control issues made it too annoying to be worth continuing. Sorry, Wil Wheaton, your presence in this game now just isn't enough to make me want to keep playing it. (/EDIT)

[1] - Steam says last play was on Dec. 16, 2018, but unlike the first attempt years before that in which I'd made it to the end of the available content at the time (though there's probably twice the amount of that available now), that one was an abortive second attempt where I barely made it past the tutorial missions before stopping again.

...are either admitting that they've never actually seen an episode of original series Star Trek, or they are admitting that they've hated Star Trek since 1966, or they are admitting that they've completely missed the point of Star Trek. Because Star Trek has always been "woke," long before the feeble label of "woke" was misapplied to everything under the sun by bigoted assholes who use it to try to subvert something that is good (i.e. the entire concept of not being a bigoted asshole, which was the actual meaning of being "woke," (EDIT 2)[2](/EDIT 2) back before the bigoted assholes started trying to subvert it) into something that is, at least according to the bigoted assholes, worthy of hate (because of course bigoted assholes would hate a concept that tries to persuade people to not be bigoted assholes, because if such a thing managed to catch on, it would mean that the bigoted assholes could no longer be bigoted assholes free of the consequences of being a bigoted asshole).

(EDIT) I thought that I'd already made a post like this, and, sure enough, I did. It's just that it was back in the days when the go to phrases of bigoted assholes were "SJW agenda" and "PC culture" rather than "woke." It all means the same thing, though. It means "we're being punished by society for being bigoted assholes when we act like bigoted assholes, and we don't like that; we just want to be free to be bigoted assholes without having to face the consequences of being bigoted assholes, and so we're going to be even bigger bigoted assholes towards anything and everything that might be trying to get us so stop being bigoted assholes, by labeling all of that stuff with asinine buzzwords like 'SJW agenda' and 'PC culture' and 'woke' in an effort to make a good thing seem like a bad thing, because we're bigoted and we're assholes." (/EDIT)

(EDIT 2)
[2] - Actually, the original original meaning of "woke," at least in context, was simply used to show that one was aware of the injustice and systemic bigotry that was and is baked into society as a whole. Because it absolutely is. And that's why bigoted assholes hate the idea of people being "woke" so much and why they're trying so hard to redefine "woke" as something bad.
(/EDIT 2)

Finished it. It's still pretty great. Instead of "reviewing" it or whatever, I'll just talk about what I want to see in the future (because it's good enough that I want to see more of it). One thing I want to see, no make that two things I want to see, in season 3 (after they resolve the "to be continued" cliffhanger at the end of season 2), the first is the Wesley "The Traveler" Crusher thing, which seems like a pretty sure thing.

The second thing I would like to see in season 3 (or at some point, at least) of Star Trek: Lower Decks...

Basically, I want to see something akin to the "Trials and Tribble-ations" episode of Deep Space Nine, where they went back in time to the Original Series episode "The Trouble with Tribbles." Except, in the case of Lower Decks, they'd be going back into an episode of The Animated Series in a similar fashion. I mean, it doesn't even have to be one episode. Could be "More Tribbles, More Trouble," could be "The Practical Joker," could be that one where they met the devil, or any combination of those and the rest. It would be interesting to see the Lower Decks crew trying to... um... let's say, emulate the animation style from TAS, in the same manner that the DS9 crew tried to emulate how things were in the Original Series era (like how Worf had to hide his forehead ridges due to Klingons not having them back then). It'd be worth it just to see Dr. T'Ana and M'Ress in a scene together, if absolutely nothing else (or maybe something happens to M'Ress that requires T'Ana to have to try and pretend to be M'Ress for a while or something). Oh and, of course, they'd totally need to bring back Mulder and Scully I mean Dulmur and Lucsly for this, too.

Hell, given that Wesley Crusher is a Time LordTraveler now, they could even combine the two things I want to see into one thing (or bring Wil Wheaton back again after the first thing for the second thing). Really, I wouldn't mind Wesley "The Traveler" Crusher becoming a semi-regular guest on Lower Decks in the same way that Q was on Next Generation (and DS9 and Voyager and Picard).

In the incredibly unlikely event that someone in charge of Star Trek: Lower Decks (or Wil Wheaton) happens to read this post, take this idea absolutely for free, I don't care. I just want to see it.

A post on Wil Wheaton dot net.

And here is the thing Mr. Wheaton is talking about in that post:
I'd watch the shit out of that if it were a real show and not just a two minute "what if" thing. Star Trek: The Animated Series was legitimately good, for the most part (even with the corny 70s animation, which is on glorious display here).

I happened to see something about this, and my initial thought was along the lines of "holy shit, someone's finally making the kind of Star Trek game that I want to play..."

...and then I saw that shit-sucking goddammned Epic Games Store logo, and a little piece of me just died, right then and there.

I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it again: to hell forever with the fucking Epic Shit Store.

(EDIT) Also, I was already in a terrible mood for unrelated reasons before that point, and this most definitely did not help matters. (EDIT 2) Which would probably at least partially explain why I didn't catch the fact that the subject line said "Stat Trek" up until I fixed it just now. >_> (/EDIT 2) (/EDIT)

(EDIT 3) Okay, now that I'm in a slightly better mood than I was when I originally wrote this...

Once this finally claws its way out of the festering pit of exclusivity which is the Epic Gunk Store in a year or so, I'll definitely be getting this, and probably sooner than later, especially if it's at the typical Telltale-like price point and doesn't try to pretend to be a full $60+ thing. (/EDIT 3)